GAC Students Discuss Sexual Violence on College Campuses

A number of students at Gustavus Adolphus College gather to discuss the issue of sexual violence on college campuses.

"These discussions are really important to the people who live at Gustavus, the people who work at Gustavus, because if we don't have these discussions, no change is ever going to happen, so I think these discussions are a really good start to be proactive in our community," said Hannah Kerber, Gustavus Adolphus student.

Earlier Thursday night, around 50 students talked about sexual violence and the culture at Gustavus Adolphus pinpointing changes they'd like to see made to the school's sexual misconduct policy.

"We specifically would like to see the administration move towards supporting survivors and survivors' rights, instead of just the bare minimum of what they can do, and make it comfortable for survivors to be on campus," said Hannah Silva-Breen, GAC Womyn's Awareness Center Executive Board Member.

The discussion centers on a widely–circulated social media post about an incident on campus.

Neither Gustavus, nor the Womyn's Awareness Center would comment on the incident.

"It's so important that this comes out for those who are comfortable about talking about this, and say we're going to have a dialogue about this, and we're going to move that dialogue from just a conversation to action, and changing our culture," said Leah Soule, WAC Co-President.

"It seems we have one side that are very supportive of survivors along with survivors on that side, and then on the other side, we seem to have a lot of people who are just kind of unaware of what's going on or try to make excuses as they don't see rape kind of on the same level as any other type of crime," said Silva-Breen.

There is going to be a meeting with administration on the issue this Monday night in the Chapel.